“With the lines out, and all the scared gamblers scrambling around trying to get away from the casino, or trying to grab some chips, or whatever you do when the lights go out at the craps table. Anyway, it took a while before anybody knew what the hell was going on and got the word out.“ Largo eased back into his chair. “I think just about every track you can drive on was blocked by sunup, but by then they had a hell of a lead. Next thing, maybe nine-thirty or so, the word went out somebody in a pickup had shot at the Utah trooper. That shifted the focus westward. The next day a couple of deputy sheriffs found a banged-up pickup abandoned up by the Arizona-Utah border south of Bluff. It fit the description.”
“They find any tracks? Were they walking out, changing cars or what?”
“Two sets of tracks around the truck, but here came the feds in their 'copters'—Largo paused, waved his arms in imitation of a helicopter’s rotors—'and blew everything away.”
“Slow learners,” Chee said. “That’s the same way they fanned away the tracks we’d found across the San Juan in that big thing in ’98.”
“Maybe we ought to get the Federal Aviation Administration to order all those things grounded during manhunts,” Largo said.
'They have anything to match them with? Did they find any tracks at the casino?”
Largo shook his head, paused to sip his coffee, shrugged. “It looked like we were going to have an encore performance of that 1998 business. The federals got a command post set up. Everybody was getting into the act. Regular circus. All we needed was the performing elephants. Had plenty of clowns.”
Chee grinned.
“You’d have loved to come home to that.”
“I’d have gone right back to Alaska,” Chee said. “How’d the FBI find out about the airplane?”
“The owner called in to report it stolen. He said he’d been away up in Denver. When he got home he noticed somebody had broken into his barn, and the airplane he kept there was gone.”
“Close to where the pickup was abandoned?”
“Mile and a half or so,” Largo said. “Maybe two.”
Chee considered that. Largo watched him.
“You’re thinking they must have liked to walk.”
“Well, there’s that,” Chee said. “But maybe they wanted to hide the truck. Or if it was found, keep it far enough from the barn so there wouldn’t be a connection.”
“Uh-huh,” Largo said, and sipped coffee. “The FBI says the truck was disabled.”
“Out there, it’s easy enough to blow tires or bust an oil pan on the rocks if you want to,” Chee said.
Largo nodded. “I remember back at Tuba City you did that to a couple of our units, and you claimed you weren’t even trying.”
Chee let that pass. “Anyway,” he said, “I just hope that airplane had enough gas in it to get ‘em out of our jurisdiction.”
“Full tank, the owner said.'
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Chee said. “I mean how neat everything worked out on both ends of this business.”
Largo nodded. “If this was my responsibility now, I’d be getting that rancher’s fingerprints and checking out his record and seeing if he was maybe tied up with survivalists, or the Earth Liberation Front, or the tree-huggers, or one of the militia.”
“I imagine the FBI is taking care of that. That’s the part they’re good at,” Chee said. “And how about the casino end? What do you hear about that?”
“They think the rent-a-cop was part of the team. Filled ’em in on when the money was sacked up for the Brinks pickup. Which wires to cut, which security people had the evening off. All that.”
“Any evidence?”
Largo shrugged. “Nothing much I know about. This Teddy Bai they’re holding in the hospital, he had a juvenile record. Witnesses said he was acting skittish all evening. Waiting around out in the lot when he was supposed to be in watching the drunks.”
